White House Initiative Spearheads Summit on Latino Academic Excellence: Hispanic students are the fastest growing population in U.S. public school systems, representing one in five students in grades K-12 and one in four in kindergarten. Yet they also have a drop-out rate that is close to 50 percent. How to reverse that statistic and help these students enter and graduate from college was the theme of a two-day National Summit and Call to Action hosted by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Education leaders gathered in Washington on Monday and Tuesday to share best practices and strategize about ways to increase education access for Hispanic-Americans and help reach President Barack Obama’s goal to significantly increase college graduation rates by 2020. Obama will sign an executive order on Tuesday aimed at helping raise Hispanic academic achievement.
